Customer Journey Planning: How to Save time and Publish Better Content

Learn how to save time and publish better content by leveraging AI and NLP in your customer journey planning process. Kim Scoppetta, Sr Director of Content at NP Digital, and Jeff Coyle, Co-founder and CSO of MarketMuse, discuss how to show expertise and create content with the right intent across every part of the buyer journey.

You’ll learn how to use NLP and generative AI to save time, what to include in your Content Brief, safe ways to incorporate ChatGPT into your process, and the importance of intent when creating content. Tune in to learn how to leverage AI and NLP for a better customer journey planning process!

Process and structure are critical to building successful content teams.

As content team leader, Kim Scoppetta emphasizes the importance of process when building a content team. “I think for building my team, it was kind of looking at what the end goal should be and then taking the steps back from there,” she says.

“Once we had the general idea set, slicing that off. Documenting everything, making sure that you understand who is doing what, that way, as you bring on new team members as well, they have an easy place to reference. I think all those pieces would really help in building a team.”

Jeff asks what the “milestones” were for building a content team, and Kim replied that it was all about being “flexible and nimble” and having “professional development” conversations with the team. “Process is critical as you’re building the team,” he said.

Kim also discusses the importance of content briefs and blog outlines. “The goal is to have someone come to the page, learn what they want to know, and not have to click back and search for something else,” she says. “Having a writer have both that and the questions to answer, they can marry the two and really create that double eat experience to show the clients expertise and authority.”

The panelists discuss the importance of making content quality and comprehensiveness “objective,” with Kim emphasizing the need to “take that subjectivity out of it.”

She explains her goal is to “make what’s normally very subjective more objective,” and that she’s tried to “establish certain tools and processes on my team where we can objectively show, look, we’re doing what’s best for you.”

Quality content requires an in-depth understanding of the user and the client’s sales funnel.

When discussing how to create quality content, Kim stressed the importance of “putting yourself in the user’s shoes” and understanding their needs. “It is more of a required thing because like I said, we have more words to cover and we never want our words to be fluff,” she said.

To ensure that their words weren’t fluff, she recommends creating blog outlines to give the client a “basis of understanding” for the project.

In addition to understanding the user, Kim says it’s important to understand the client’s sales funnel. “It’s that education piece of showing clients you want to take care of your potential customers from the top down,” she says. Jeff agrees, using the example of looking for hubcaps for a Subaru to illustrate the importance of getting an intent match.

Finally, Kim discusses the importance of having a team of writers who could be “nimble” enough to understand the client’s needs. “It’s about being able to listen to an SME, internalize it, and produce what they’re looking for,” she says. “Every single client is going to be different, so it’s important to have writers who can be flexible and adaptable.”

Content creation is an important part of customer journey planning and requires expertise and legwork to create quality content.

Kim and Jeff discuss the importance of content creation in customer journey planning during the webinar. Kim highlights the need to look at gaps in content and analyze customer churn to better understand the customer journey. Jeff adds that “we need to invest in content at the awareness phase, consideration post purchase troubleshooting.”

Jeff also emphasizes the need for a content creator who can “express the company’s unique opinions” and “not just demonstrate expertise on the subject.” Kim suggests “finding someone on their product team that we can talk to so we can really understand the ins and out of their product and what the unique propositions are there.”

Jeff acknowledges that “you do need to designate” a person with the right expertise to create content, and Kim agreed that “showing them that the legwork really creates better quality” is important.

AI tools can help content writers create content faster and more efficiently.

Kim believes that AI tools can help content writers focus more on the strategic side of content creation. “It’s actually allowing them to focus more time on the strategic part of it,” she says.

“We use it as a tool, just like all the other tools we have in our belt to make that manual part upfront faster or allow the writer to find inspiration faster. So with AI tools, I think it’s giving us even more value and allowing us to spend more of our time in a way that will benefit the client long term.”

Jeff Coyle adds that AI tools can help writers create content faster and more efficiently. “I’m generating content where I’m using generative AI and it feels like that should actually cut time, thus be less expensive for me to pay for,” he said.

Kim also noted that AI tools can help content writers create content that’s more accurate and up-to-date. As she explains, “It allows us to focus more on the unique point of view, the nitty gritty sit down with the client.”

“Not only vetting it from a content strategist perspective, but also having that subject matter expert vet it and make sure, yes, this is the correct information, like we still do.”

Jeff speaks about the importance of having an editorial process, even when using AI tools. “We’re actually critiquing the page where the application of the brief, where when you have an approved brief, some writing teams will say they can bypass the development edit.”

Kim agrees, noting that editors can play an important role in ensuring that the content is up to the standards of the client. As she puts it, “Our editors play a role of being the second set of eyes from not just a grammar and spelling perspective, but also a branding perspective.”

“They can give a fresh perspective and make sure everything was included in there. So I think that the editor can play a couple of different roles, whether it is spelling, grammar, branding, whatever, but no matter what, it’s just someone being that second gut check to make sure everything that we wanted to cover was covered and was covered correctly.”

Featured Guest

Kim Scoppetta is the Senior Director of Content for the small- to medium-business side of NP Digital. She created and grew the company’s content team into what it is today, with a focus on writing best practices, processes, and — of course — SEO. With an editorial and marketing project management background, Kim lives in the unique space between creativity and operational efficiency.

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